Ski resort approval poses Jumbo issue for Christy Clark

Mark Hume, for the Globe and Mail

There’s an elephant in the room and it’s about to roll over. Appropriately it is called Jumbo.

Twenty years ago, a proposal was made to build a new ski resort on a glacier atop Jumbo Mountain, in the East Kootenay region of southeastern British Columbia. Over the decades, it has slowly navigated the arduous regulatory process and now needs only final approval from the province.

If the Jumbo Glacier Resort project gets approval this month, as some anticipate, it could present Premier Christy Clark with something she hasn’t had to deal with yet – an international environmental fight supported by celebrities such as hockey legend Scott Niedermayer and singer Bruce Cockburn. Both of them are part of a campaign to keep the wilderness area undeveloped. If the Jumbo Glacier Resort project gets approval this month, as some anticipate, it could present Premier Christy Clark with something she hasn’t had to deal with yet – an international environmental fight supported by celebrities such as hockey legend Scott Niedermayer and singer Bruce Cockburn. Both of them are part of a campaign to keep the wilderness area undeveloped.

 Ms. Clark’s enthusiastic promotion of mines and pipelines in B.C. has already set her on a collision course with environmental groups and first nations. But it is one thing for a government to promote vital resource developments that can produce much needed jobs and taxes – and quite another to back a luxurious ski resort that doesn’t make much economic sense.

With the European and U.S. economies in crisis, does Ms. Clark really want to stand up and defend the building of a new resort, knowing it will compete with existing resorts for an already dwindling international tourism market?

Continue reading this article here.